NYT:TALLIL AIR BASE, Iraq — In this desert brush land where the occupiers and occupied are moving into an uneasy new partnership, American and Iraqi commanders sat side by side earlier this week and described their biggest problems to Robert M. Gates, the visiting defense secretary.

For Staff Maj. Gen. Habib al-Hussani, the commander of the 10th Iraqi Army Division, the trouble was not enough equipment for patrols on the border with Iran. For Col. Peter A. Newell, the commander of the first American advisory brigade to Iraqi troops, it was something else.

“The hardest thing to do sometimes,” he told Mr. Gates, “is step back and not be in charge.”
(LINK).

Therein lies the 'problem' that we have created. If it's FID, we can't be in charge; if it's COIN we have to be in charge. Thus we are ...

What we're SUPPOSED to be doing is FID and helping the Host Nation with THEIR COIN effort since we cannot do COIN because they aren't our insurgents and isn't in our country. The capabilities and qualities of their government are irrelevant -- it is still not ours. By over controlling, we're confusing everyone -- except the bad guys who are taking advantage of it...

That will be dismissed by some as simplistic. It is not. Having lived and fought under that dichotomy in three other Nations under perhaps more violent circumstances and with the exact same 'problem' a while ago, let me assure you that I learned the hard way over a few years that is not a good plan.